A/N: Wow, thank you for all of the reviews, please keep them coming! I'm going to update this story as much as possible because I have so many ideas on what happened to the girls whilst they were in there with Charlotte and how Hanna is going to recover from the past three years. If any reviews have any ideas they would love to see played out in this story in regards to the torture the girls went through, I would love to hear them!
Disclaimer: The characters and the show belongs to Pretty Little Liars, I own nothing other than the storyline of this story.
"The most painful goodbyes are the ones that are never said and never explained."
Hanna's eyes fluttered open, surprised to see the bright lights above her head and the sound of chattering around her. Leaving that place had almost seemed too good to be true, she had expected to wake up and be right back there. She had thought it was just a cruel dream, one that had felt so real because actually waking up somewhere other than that hell, had just seemed too unrealistic. For one year, they had fought for their freedom, they had done everything they could to hatch some sort of escape plan and they had spoken of their families and the people who meant so much to them as though they would see them again.
After their eleventh escape plan failed, the hope started to dwindle. Suddenly, they were talking of the people on the outside as though they would never see them again, Hanna started to refer to Caleb in the past tense, as though he was the one gone. She would hide in the fake cupboard that was meant to reflect the cupboard in her own bedroom, and in that second year, she would talk to Caleb and her mom, hoping that somehow, they would hear her and they would know she was still alive. It was hell being there, but she couldn't imagine what it was like not knowing – with Alison, they had found a body and whilst it wasn't her, they had what they believed to be closure. The people who loved them didn't even have that, they were living in limbo, forever wondering and never knowing what had happened to the four girls.
She had no idea how much time had passed before she stopped talking to her imaginary Caleb and her mom, and stopped talking about them to her friends. It had taken so long but then every last bit of hope she had disappeared. It had almost happened overnight, as though she had woken up one day and decided she was never going to escape. That first day there, she had started a tally on how long she spent there and her fingers had moved over the marks etched into the wall that had stopped on day one hundred and seventy two. Sometimes, she wished she had carried on so she knew how long it had been since she had last spoken to the person she loved so much. She couldn't even say it had been since her last taste of freedom but thanks to the failure of the Rosewood Police Department, she hadn't even been free before she was abducted by A.
In the distance, she could hear her mother's voice, desperately crying out for her before she told the doctors she was going nowhere. It had been over three years, Hanna could hear her repeating those words over and over again as the doctors tried to push her out of the room so they could check on her daughter without her interference. Hanna wondered what month it was, wondering if she had missed her own twenty-first birthday for just a moment before she almost laughed at herself – did it matter? Would she really want to celebrate anything else ever again after everything that had happened?
There were familiar screams that seemed to echo through the hospital, screams she had heard far too many times before and she felt herself starting to sob. She wasn't back there, she knew that but those noises were enough to take her right back to where she had spent way too long. She was meant to have graduated high school, she was meant to have started college, she had hoped to move to New York with Caleb – by twenty-one, she wanted to be engaged to him as she started her final year in college. She had plans, so many plans and instead, she was sobbing in a hospital bed as she listened to Spencer's panicked screams as she had done so many nights before.
Ashley came into her line of vision, her hand resting on her daughter's forehead before she ran her fingers through her hair, and then leaned down to press her lips to her forehead. Whispered words of comfort followed and Hanna just kept staring at her as she calmed down; the doctors didn't try to move her this time as Hanna's eyes remained focused on her mother's. She was finally calm enough for them to see to her injuries, as the blonde placed all of her attention on the woman she never thought she would see again. The last time she had seen her face had been a newspaper cutting on the second year anniversary of their disappearance, she had been standing there with the rest of their parents, appealing to the press to help them find their daughters. A had let them keep the picture and for a while, it had been the only thing she had that reminded her that despite how much time had passed, there were still people who cared for them all. People who still fought to find them, even if they never could.
Hanna still hadn't said a word, the doctors and the nurses had aimed questions at her but she had yet to respond. She didn't know when that particular burn was acquired, she could barely remember how it happened – was it from the time she had refused to leave her room when A had demanded she would? Or maybe it was from when she refused to hit Aria with the baseball bat A had placed in her hands? Maybe it was from the time she had refused to let go of Mona's dead body, or the time she had wrecked her room when A had kept them trapped in there for over a week. All of it blurred into one, hazy, terrifying memory and Hanna couldn't differentiate between every single moment.
Silent tears fell down her face when she heard a doctor mumbling about an infected wound on her thigh, as a nurse tended to her sore feet. She could barely feel the pain anymore, after so long of going through it with injury being added on top of injury, it was hard to even focus on what hurt where. All four of them had tried to cope with it in different ways, but Hanna had completely shut down. Sometimes, she hadn't even felt what was meant to be causing her the greatest of pain. Spencer still fought back as hard as she possibly could, she still screamed loudly, she still pushed back when she could. Aria cried a lot, she spent most of her time with her arms wrapped around her knees and tears running down her face – she barely spoke, and when she did it was in hushed tones. And then Emily was somewhere between the three; sometimes she would cry, sometimes she would fight back and sometimes she would just stare ahead, blanking everything out and then sometimes, she would taunt the person who was hurting her, she would remain silent but there was a smirk on her face and a daring look in her eyes as though she was telling A to give it their best. To do everything they could to try and break the person they had already broken.
Sometimes, Hanna wondered what the point was in torturing them physically anymore when the damage had already been done. They were already broken, they had already lost hope, they stopped thinking about escaping and they stopped talking about the future. If A wanted to hurt them, it had already been done and it was only then that Hanna realised that the person was truly getting pleasure from their pain – why else would they be kept there for so long and then released as though no time had passed at all? Handed a piece of paper with an address on it and then told to run, run faster than they ever had before before their mind was changed. Why? After so long, why decide to just let them go?
The questions whirled through her mind, and she finally closed her eyes in an attempt to stop the tears. She was home, she was meant to be safe but she felt anything other than safe. Maybe that was all A wanted, for them to never be able to move on from anything that happened, for them to never feel safe and happy and loved again. Maybe that mission was accomplished after so long and that was why she was handed an address to her boyfriend's (or maybe he was her ex-boyfriend, she quickly questioned herself, considering how long it had been since she had last seen him) apartment.
Hanna had no idea how much time had passed between that moment and when she opened her eyes again – suddenly, the doctors were gone, there was no chattering, the lights had been dimmed and there were wires surrounding her. She could hear a beeping that sounded through the room, and her eyes moved to observe the machine next to her bed, watching for just a second as she reminded herself that she was alive. And she had no idea if she was happy about that.
Her eyes moved to settle on the person who sat next to her bed, the sleeping woman reminding her that there was at least one good reason for her to still be breathing. Everything that had happened, every ounce of pain she had been through, no matter what happened from that moment, Hanna knew she would have closure and that was all she had ever wanted. She longed for her mom to be able to move on with her life, whether Hanna lived or died, she would have the answers she would need to be able to do so.
The blonde bit down on her lip because it terrified her that she was out of the hell she had been living in for so long, and she was still hating the fact she was alive. Escape plans had turned into attempted suicide plans after a while and she had thought that getting out of there would somehow take all of that pain away, all those dark thoughts would disappear and she would begin moving on with her life. She still wanted to die, she couldn't see a path that would lead to her happiness, to her being able to move on from everything that had happened. The beeping was quicker than it had been, and her chest was uncomfortable, as she shook her head and pulled her hand from the sleeping woman's. Those dark thoughts didn't deserve the comfort of the woman next to her – she had just gotten her back and Hanna was already thinking of leaving her.
She opened her mouth to say sorry as Ashley woke up, a panicked look on her face, but the words wouldn't come out. Hanna hadn't spoken a single word in over a year, she had forgotten how her own voice sounded, and it almost felt as though she had forgotten how to speak. Somehow, her mother understood though and she just moved to stand up, her fingers running through Hanna's hair once again before she told her that everything was going to be okay, she was safe, she was loved, she was going to be okay. And then her lips pressed to her forehead in the loving way that had always made Hanna feel loved, "I'm going to get Caleb," She whispered, "He's been pacing the waiting room since you arrived here... do you want to see him?"
Hanna hesitated before she gave a small nod of her head, and then watched her mother leave the room in a hurry. Ashley gave one last look at her daughter before she headed towards the waiting room where she knew everyone was waiting, "She's okay," She told Caleb, "I just thought that you'd want to see her." He nodded his head but didn't rush off the room as she thought he would, his attention turned to the people he had been waiting for and he frowned, they had been waiting for so long for this moment and it felt too good to be true. All four girls were in the hospital, with a list of injuries longer than he could have ever imagined, he had been sat there since Hanna had arrived in the hospital almost seven hours prior and he had been witness to both relief and pain.
He had watched as Ella sobbed into Byron's arms and he tried to hold back his own tears as he held her as close as he possibly could, Aria had been calling out for them in the room whilst the doctors had tried to see to her injuries and they had been pushed out with the promise they would let them see her as soon as they had assessed her. He had watched as Pam stood alone outside Emily's room, silent tears rolling down her face as she bit her nails, wondering how she was going to tell her daughter that her father had died six months previously. And Peter and Veronica Hastings fought with the doctors to let them back in the room where their screaming, traumatised daughter was.
Alison hadn't spoken a word to anyone since the moment she had gotten there, her eyes stared into space as she pondered over what Emily had kept repeating to her. Toby had been the first to mention it, and he was sat as far away from Ali as he possibly could be when his anger had become too much – almost as though the fact that the person who had tortured the people they loved so much, shared a last name with the blonde, then it was her fault. Charlotte DiLaurentis was the name that had been repeated by Spencer and Emily, whilst Ezra had shaken his head and told him that Aria had just clung to him and told him she was sorry, although he had to tell her over and over again that she had nothing to be sorry for. They had a name, but they still knew nothing about the person who had stolen the four girls from them.
His eyes were red from crying, and his knuckles were bruised from when he had gone outside for a smoke and let the anger completely consume him. She was back but she was broken, he had a name for the person who had hurt her but that was all he had to go on, and the police were still being as hopeless as they always had been. He had accidentally heard the line of questioning that the police were going down when they had approached the doctors who point blank refused to let them into any of the rooms. Could the wounds have been self-inflicted? Was the only question he had heard before he had to leave before he spent the first night he had Hanna back in a police cell for assaulting a police officer. Even though he was exhausted, he fought the urge to sleep because he didn't trust the police not to try and harass Hanna and the doctors not to let them. "Will you keep an eye on everything?" He asked his friends, "Just make sure Tanner doesn't come sniffing around here." Toby waved him off, letting him know that it was obvious they were going to do so without him having to say the words.
Ashley hesitated for a second before she placed her hand on Caleb's shoulder, "I-I thought I would go home and get some rest, pick up some of Hanna's clothes so she feels a little more... herself and then maybe get some of her favourite food. She's on a drip at the moment, the doctors said she's so malnourished and exhausted that they don't want to try her on solid food at the moment but at least we can have some of her snacks ready..." She rambled and Caleb pressed his lips to her cheek as he smiled at her, his hand moving to rub her back before he spoke.
"Don't feel guilty about leaving," He mumbled, "I'll look after her until you get back and you need to be well rested." She only gave a small smile, "I'll bring you dinner." She told him, considering they had been there since close to three that morning and it was almost lunch time. They had become close since Hanna had been missing, an unspoken promise to Hanna that they would look after each other until and beyond her returning to them.
His eyes followed her as she left, just making sure she was okay before he took a deep breath – he felt scared, he had already seen her when she first got to his door but she was covered in dirt, and he had been so focused on getting her to the hospital that he hadn't fully evaluated the injuries that he had been told she had. Injuries that included old broken bones that had never healed properly so the doctors would have to re-break her bones to give them a chance to heal in the way they were meant to, infected cuts, electrical burns and so many more that he couldn't think about right then. He didn't want to leave her alone for too long though, unsure of what would happen because Ashley had told him of the self-inflicted scars that littered her wrists as well.
Slowly, he walked into the room and was relieved to see her eyes open, just staring at the heart rate monitor next to her bed, seemingly fixated with watching the lines leap up with every beat. "Han," He whispered, so not to startle her, smiling at her when she looked at him. "Your mom has just gone to get some of your clothes, she'll be back soon." She didn't reply, he hadn't expected her to, but he moved to sit down next to her bed, "You should sleep, I'll be right here, I won't let anything happen to you." Slowly, his hand moved to rest in hers, smiling when her eyes fell to a close, "I'm never going to let anything happen to you ever again, Hanna. I promise."
